The Second War to Last a Lifetime
Chapter Two- A Memory of the Past
Vanessa woke to find herself in a large four-poster bed, with the curtains closed around her.
Vaguely, she wondered where she was. She then remembered the men who had kidnapped her and Tonks from the Hogsmede night club. She couldn't, however, remember being brought to this room. She guessed her kidnappers had drugged the food and drink they had given her the night before.
I should have known better that to eat or drink anything they gave me, she thought.
Vanessa opened the curtains of the four-poster and took in the room around her. She stepped out of bed, her feet touching the rug that lay on the hard wood floor beneath the bed. A large window with a window seat was to the right of the bed, and to the right, closest to where Vanessa stood, was a fireplace with a mantle. An elegant rug lay on the floor before the fireplace. On the rug, set facing the fireplace, which was fireless as it was only the beginning of the autumn season and still quite warm, was a couch. On either sides of the couch, and set at angles to the fireplace, were two chairs. Between each chair and side of the couch were expensive looking lamps. Placed in front of the couch was a long, glass-inlaid oak coffee table. The wall across from the bed looked to be made of shelves and raggedy, old, moth-eaten books. At second glance of this wall, however, Vanessa noticed a polished oak door. The owner of the house, or rather mansion was obviously very wealthy.
At that precise moment the door opened and cloaked and hooded man entered, closing the door behind him.
Vanessa's body stiffened but she held her ground and her glare as he made his way towards her.
Only when he was at arms length did she dare to speak.
"Who are you? Where am I, and why am I here?"
The man laughed a horribly cold laugh that Vanessa knew all to well from her past.
"I think you know very well who I am, Vanessa," the man said.
"Lucius," Vanessa said. The man lowered his hood to reveal the one person who had made a majority of her time at Hogwarts a living hell. He shook his head, his blond hair falling down to his shoulder, and stared at her, his light grayish blue eyes penetrating her originally dark brown ones. He grinned showing perfectly straight, white teeth. The man might have been handsome, had it not been for the sneer that constantly adorned his face.
"Yes, yes," Lucius said and made a forward motion towards her.
"Don't take another step!"
"Or what? You'll hex me? Go ahead, or haven't you noticed? You haven't got your wand."
Vanessa looked down and noticed she was no longer wearing the dress she had been wearing the night before. Someone, whom she hoped was not Lucius, had dressed her in a lilac colored night gown. She glanced at the night stand by the bed, and then back at Lucius. She shivered, feeling extremely vulnerable without her wand.
"What'd you do with my wand," she asked through clenched teeth.
"Now, now," Lucius taunted, "you'll get it back; all in good time. Right now, however, we need to talk. You have some information that is most valuable to my master."
"I'll never talk," Vanessa said. "I'll never give in, even if you torture me."
"Oh, no," Lucius said, moving ever more closely to her, so close that she could smell the mint-scent of his breath. She stiffened as he looked her up and down. "You're too... too good for that." He was right in front of her. "I can make you talk." He took her face in his hands and smashed his mouth to hers. Vanessa squirmed out of his hold and pushed him away. She slapped him with a fierce force that he staggered backwards. He raised his hand and felt where she had hit him, still red and raw on his pale face. He sneered at her and laughed, turning on his heel. At the door he stopped and looked back at her.
"This is not over," he said simply, as if they were merely discussing whether Muggle appliances actually worked. "You will talk, whether it is your will or not."
"Nothing you do to me will make me give in," Vanessa said, still fuming.
Lucius laughed a cold laugh that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
"Oh, there are many ways to break one even as defiant as you; each one more enjoyable than the last."
With that he left and Vanessa went to her bed and got in. She cried silently, holding an un-dyed cotton pillow to her.
An hour later, the door opened and Lucius entered carrying a tray laden with food. The smell wafting from it enticed Vanessa enough so that she sat up and watched Lucius's progress to the couch and watched as he set the tray down on the coffee table. She noticed there were two plates, two sets of utensils, and enough food for two people to eat and still have leftovers. Vanessa guessed Lucius was staying for breakfast.
"Come eat," Lucius said. "It's not drugged. You only get that luxury once."
She ignored him.
"Tonks," she said. "Where is she?"
"Oh, she's in good hands. She has roughly the same accommodations as you."
"Where is she," Vanessa repeated.
"She's in one of the dungeons. She has a nice straw bed and meagar food rations. Two guards stay in with her, day and night. You may very well get the same if you don't cooperate. Now, come and eat."
"I'll eat with pigs first!"
"Fiery temper. I'm sure you get that from the werewolf."
Vanessa's eyes widened.
"Oh, yes, we know all about you and your beast fiancé. Pity he'll get you back used and wasted, that is, if he gets you back at all."
Vanessa glared daggers at him, and got out of bed, wishing she had more than the night gown on, and made her way to the couch. She sat down slowly and winced as Lucius sat in the chair closest to her.
He dished out the food onto two plates, handed her a plate and a fork, and then began eating his own.
Vanessa, not trusting Lucius in the least, waved her hand over her plate, smelling the scent. Satisfied that the food hadn't been drugged or poisoned, she began to eat discreetly, but ravenously.
Must be the after effects of the sleep drug that's made me so hungry, she thought as she ate. She was perfectly aware that Lucius was not eating, but instead watching her intently.
"There's no need to impress me, Vanessa," he said finally.
"Who's impressing anybody," Vanessa asked him, her mouth full of scrambled eggs and sausage. She grinned as he cringed at the sight.
He lifted his napkin and dabbed the corners of his mouth. He then placed it on top of his plate of eggs and sausages, which he had hardly touched, and then placed the plate on the table.
Vanessa, satiated and content with the meal, took her napkin, wiped her own mouth and threw it onto her empty plate. She then placed it on the coffee table.
Lucius took out his wand and pointed it at the dishes and tray. With a flick of his wrist and a few well chosen words the dishes, suddenly clean, vanished.
With the tray and dishes taken care of, Lucius stared at Vanessa. Vanessa looked at her feet, completely aware and quite uncomfortable with Lucius's uninvited attention. It had been the same when they went to Hogwarts.
Memories suddenly filled her thoughts.
...Vanessa was in one of the off-hallways near the library. Lucius had caught up with her and pushed her against the wall. He was in his seventh year, and Vanessa, in her fifth. They were both Slytherins, but Vanessa had often thought that if she had asked the Sorting Hat to put her anywhere but Slytherin then she would be in Gryffindor.
"Hello, Johnson," Lucius whispered in her ear, his voice husky, using her last name, as he always did.
"Get off me, Lucius," Vanessa said, trying desperately to push him off her, and failing. She really hadn't been too hopeful, because she was a Metamorphmagus, and Metamorphmagi were always weak.
"Still dating Severus," he asked, grinning maliciously down at her.
"No, not that it's any of your business."
"But it is my business, Johnson. Anything concerning you is my business." He bent down to kiss her, but Vanessa squirmed.
"Get away from me!"
Just then a boy in her year, a Gryffindor boy, with short light brown hair came, seeing what was happening, and took out his wand, pointing it at Lucius. Lucius left Vanessa and stared at the boy with narrowing eyes. He then took out his own wand and pointed it at the boy.
"Going to duel me, werewolf," Lucius spat at the boy. Vanessa's eyes had widened when Lucius called the boy a werewolf. Lucius, noticing this, nodded. "It's true, Johnson. Lupin, here, is indeed a werewolf, aren't you?"
"Snivillus tell you then, did he?" the boy asked, speaking for the first time.
"If you mean Severus Snape, then yes, he did. Now, are we going to duel, or stand here and do the tango?"
"Whatever it takes to make you get lost," the boy called Lupin said.
"Then we duel, because I'm not leaving."
The two of them faced each other, their wands pointing at their opponents. At once they shouted a hex at each other.
"Tellantellegra," Lucius shouted.
"Pettrificus Totalus," Lupin said.
Lupin dodged Lucius's hex but Lupin's hex hit Lucius right on. Lucius's body stiffened and he fell backwards with a loud thump. Lupin looked over at Vanessa who had slid down against the wall to sit on the floor. He went to her and held out his hand.
"Get away," Vanessa said.
Lupin's face fell but he regained his composure, smiling at the pretty Slytherin girl.
"It's okay," Lupin told her. "I won't hurt you. I promise."
Vanessa hesitated, and then took his hand and let him help her up.
"We'd better leave before he can get up," Lupin said and together they left, leaving Lucius lying on the floor. "I'm Remus Lupin."...
Vanessa's eyes filled with tears as she thought about Remus; Lucius, however, seemed not to notice.
"I have much I can give you, Vanessa," Lucius said, his voice rough and low.
"You have a wife and a son," Vanessa said, disgusted. "Even for all your faults, you should at least remember what you owe to them."
"Narcissa? She means nothing to me. I just needed her to carry out the Malfoy family line. And as to Draco, he is learning but he's rather a disappointment since he let that Mudblood girl finish Hogwarts with higher points than him. And as to what I owe... I owe them nothing. Now you... you have always been a mystery to me. I longed you ever since I met you. You're beast lover will only turn on you." He lifted her head to make her look at him and shook his head in mock sympathy. "Now, I... I will give you all you could possibly want and much more; far more than that werewolf can, especially with the Werewolf Work Restriction Act set in place. How can he even pay for those shabby robes of his? A disgrace to wizards."
That was the final straw for Vanessa. She looked at the man sitting in the chair next to her, stood up, and spit in his face. She glared at him.
"Don't you ever speak about Remus like that you... you horrible son of a Blast Ended Skrewt."
Lucius just wiped away the spit with the sleeve of his cloak, stood up, and shook his head at Vanessa as if she were just a little witch who had just been caught playing with her father's wand.
"I'll give you a day to think about what I said," he told her and went to the door. "A day, no more, no less." He left and closed the door behind him. Vanessa, angry and sad tears welling from her eyes, ran to the window seat and lied on it, looking out at a yard with a weeping willow tree. Her thoughts strayed to the other three Marauders and to Remus. It was Peter's fault, or as close to his fault then anyone, that things were as bad as they were. He made things worse. He had helped the wizarding world turn into a world of deceit, death, and misery.
Chapter Two- A Memory of the Past
Vanessa woke to find herself in a large four-poster bed, with the curtains closed around her.
Vaguely, she wondered where she was. She then remembered the men who had kidnapped her and Tonks from the Hogsmede night club. She couldn't, however, remember being brought to this room. She guessed her kidnappers had drugged the food and drink they had given her the night before.
I should have known better that to eat or drink anything they gave me, she thought.
Vanessa opened the curtains of the four-poster and took in the room around her. She stepped out of bed, her feet touching the rug that lay on the hard wood floor beneath the bed. A large window with a window seat was to the right of the bed, and to the right, closest to where Vanessa stood, was a fireplace with a mantle. An elegant rug lay on the floor before the fireplace. On the rug, set facing the fireplace, which was fireless as it was only the beginning of the autumn season and still quite warm, was a couch. On either sides of the couch, and set at angles to the fireplace, were two chairs. Between each chair and side of the couch were expensive looking lamps. Placed in front of the couch was a long, glass-inlaid oak coffee table. The wall across from the bed looked to be made of shelves and raggedy, old, moth-eaten books. At second glance of this wall, however, Vanessa noticed a polished oak door. The owner of the house, or rather mansion was obviously very wealthy.
At that precise moment the door opened and cloaked and hooded man entered, closing the door behind him.
Vanessa's body stiffened but she held her ground and her glare as he made his way towards her.
Only when he was at arms length did she dare to speak.
"Who are you? Where am I, and why am I here?"
The man laughed a horribly cold laugh that Vanessa knew all to well from her past.
"I think you know very well who I am, Vanessa," the man said.
"Lucius," Vanessa said. The man lowered his hood to reveal the one person who had made a majority of her time at Hogwarts a living hell. He shook his head, his blond hair falling down to his shoulder, and stared at her, his light grayish blue eyes penetrating her originally dark brown ones. He grinned showing perfectly straight, white teeth. The man might have been handsome, had it not been for the sneer that constantly adorned his face.
"Yes, yes," Lucius said and made a forward motion towards her.
"Don't take another step!"
"Or what? You'll hex me? Go ahead, or haven't you noticed? You haven't got your wand."
Vanessa looked down and noticed she was no longer wearing the dress she had been wearing the night before. Someone, whom she hoped was not Lucius, had dressed her in a lilac colored night gown. She glanced at the night stand by the bed, and then back at Lucius. She shivered, feeling extremely vulnerable without her wand.
"What'd you do with my wand," she asked through clenched teeth.
"Now, now," Lucius taunted, "you'll get it back; all in good time. Right now, however, we need to talk. You have some information that is most valuable to my master."
"I'll never talk," Vanessa said. "I'll never give in, even if you torture me."
"Oh, no," Lucius said, moving ever more closely to her, so close that she could smell the mint-scent of his breath. She stiffened as he looked her up and down. "You're too... too good for that." He was right in front of her. "I can make you talk." He took her face in his hands and smashed his mouth to hers. Vanessa squirmed out of his hold and pushed him away. She slapped him with a fierce force that he staggered backwards. He raised his hand and felt where she had hit him, still red and raw on his pale face. He sneered at her and laughed, turning on his heel. At the door he stopped and looked back at her.
"This is not over," he said simply, as if they were merely discussing whether Muggle appliances actually worked. "You will talk, whether it is your will or not."
"Nothing you do to me will make me give in," Vanessa said, still fuming.
Lucius laughed a cold laugh that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
"Oh, there are many ways to break one even as defiant as you; each one more enjoyable than the last."
With that he left and Vanessa went to her bed and got in. She cried silently, holding an un-dyed cotton pillow to her.
An hour later, the door opened and Lucius entered carrying a tray laden with food. The smell wafting from it enticed Vanessa enough so that she sat up and watched Lucius's progress to the couch and watched as he set the tray down on the coffee table. She noticed there were two plates, two sets of utensils, and enough food for two people to eat and still have leftovers. Vanessa guessed Lucius was staying for breakfast.
"Come eat," Lucius said. "It's not drugged. You only get that luxury once."
She ignored him.
"Tonks," she said. "Where is she?"
"Oh, she's in good hands. She has roughly the same accommodations as you."
"Where is she," Vanessa repeated.
"She's in one of the dungeons. She has a nice straw bed and meagar food rations. Two guards stay in with her, day and night. You may very well get the same if you don't cooperate. Now, come and eat."
"I'll eat with pigs first!"
"Fiery temper. I'm sure you get that from the werewolf."
Vanessa's eyes widened.
"Oh, yes, we know all about you and your beast fiancé. Pity he'll get you back used and wasted, that is, if he gets you back at all."
Vanessa glared daggers at him, and got out of bed, wishing she had more than the night gown on, and made her way to the couch. She sat down slowly and winced as Lucius sat in the chair closest to her.
He dished out the food onto two plates, handed her a plate and a fork, and then began eating his own.
Vanessa, not trusting Lucius in the least, waved her hand over her plate, smelling the scent. Satisfied that the food hadn't been drugged or poisoned, she began to eat discreetly, but ravenously.
Must be the after effects of the sleep drug that's made me so hungry, she thought as she ate. She was perfectly aware that Lucius was not eating, but instead watching her intently.
"There's no need to impress me, Vanessa," he said finally.
"Who's impressing anybody," Vanessa asked him, her mouth full of scrambled eggs and sausage. She grinned as he cringed at the sight.
He lifted his napkin and dabbed the corners of his mouth. He then placed it on top of his plate of eggs and sausages, which he had hardly touched, and then placed the plate on the table.
Vanessa, satiated and content with the meal, took her napkin, wiped her own mouth and threw it onto her empty plate. She then placed it on the coffee table.
Lucius took out his wand and pointed it at the dishes and tray. With a flick of his wrist and a few well chosen words the dishes, suddenly clean, vanished.
With the tray and dishes taken care of, Lucius stared at Vanessa. Vanessa looked at her feet, completely aware and quite uncomfortable with Lucius's uninvited attention. It had been the same when they went to Hogwarts.
Memories suddenly filled her thoughts.
...Vanessa was in one of the off-hallways near the library. Lucius had caught up with her and pushed her against the wall. He was in his seventh year, and Vanessa, in her fifth. They were both Slytherins, but Vanessa had often thought that if she had asked the Sorting Hat to put her anywhere but Slytherin then she would be in Gryffindor.
"Hello, Johnson," Lucius whispered in her ear, his voice husky, using her last name, as he always did.
"Get off me, Lucius," Vanessa said, trying desperately to push him off her, and failing. She really hadn't been too hopeful, because she was a Metamorphmagus, and Metamorphmagi were always weak.
"Still dating Severus," he asked, grinning maliciously down at her.
"No, not that it's any of your business."
"But it is my business, Johnson. Anything concerning you is my business." He bent down to kiss her, but Vanessa squirmed.
"Get away from me!"
Just then a boy in her year, a Gryffindor boy, with short light brown hair came, seeing what was happening, and took out his wand, pointing it at Lucius. Lucius left Vanessa and stared at the boy with narrowing eyes. He then took out his own wand and pointed it at the boy.
"Going to duel me, werewolf," Lucius spat at the boy. Vanessa's eyes had widened when Lucius called the boy a werewolf. Lucius, noticing this, nodded. "It's true, Johnson. Lupin, here, is indeed a werewolf, aren't you?"
"Snivillus tell you then, did he?" the boy asked, speaking for the first time.
"If you mean Severus Snape, then yes, he did. Now, are we going to duel, or stand here and do the tango?"
"Whatever it takes to make you get lost," the boy called Lupin said.
"Then we duel, because I'm not leaving."
The two of them faced each other, their wands pointing at their opponents. At once they shouted a hex at each other.
"Tellantellegra," Lucius shouted.
"Pettrificus Totalus," Lupin said.
Lupin dodged Lucius's hex but Lupin's hex hit Lucius right on. Lucius's body stiffened and he fell backwards with a loud thump. Lupin looked over at Vanessa who had slid down against the wall to sit on the floor. He went to her and held out his hand.
"Get away," Vanessa said.
Lupin's face fell but he regained his composure, smiling at the pretty Slytherin girl.
"It's okay," Lupin told her. "I won't hurt you. I promise."
Vanessa hesitated, and then took his hand and let him help her up.
"We'd better leave before he can get up," Lupin said and together they left, leaving Lucius lying on the floor. "I'm Remus Lupin."...
Vanessa's eyes filled with tears as she thought about Remus; Lucius, however, seemed not to notice.
"I have much I can give you, Vanessa," Lucius said, his voice rough and low.
"You have a wife and a son," Vanessa said, disgusted. "Even for all your faults, you should at least remember what you owe to them."
"Narcissa? She means nothing to me. I just needed her to carry out the Malfoy family line. And as to Draco, he is learning but he's rather a disappointment since he let that Mudblood girl finish Hogwarts with higher points than him. And as to what I owe... I owe them nothing. Now you... you have always been a mystery to me. I longed you ever since I met you. You're beast lover will only turn on you." He lifted her head to make her look at him and shook his head in mock sympathy. "Now, I... I will give you all you could possibly want and much more; far more than that werewolf can, especially with the Werewolf Work Restriction Act set in place. How can he even pay for those shabby robes of his? A disgrace to wizards."
That was the final straw for Vanessa. She looked at the man sitting in the chair next to her, stood up, and spit in his face. She glared at him.
"Don't you ever speak about Remus like that you... you horrible son of a Blast Ended Skrewt."
Lucius just wiped away the spit with the sleeve of his cloak, stood up, and shook his head at Vanessa as if she were just a little witch who had just been caught playing with her father's wand.
"I'll give you a day to think about what I said," he told her and went to the door. "A day, no more, no less." He left and closed the door behind him. Vanessa, angry and sad tears welling from her eyes, ran to the window seat and lied on it, looking out at a yard with a weeping willow tree. Her thoughts strayed to the other three Marauders and to Remus. It was Peter's fault, or as close to his fault then anyone, that things were as bad as they were. He made things worse. He had helped the wizarding world turn into a world of deceit, death, and misery.